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Hi David,
I'm from Cumberland, too, although I live down in Virginia right now. As far as I can tell, there are two principal lines of the DeRoche family in North America. (There may be other lines as well - these are just the two that have come to my attention.)
In both lines the family name was originally spelled "des Roches". In many US and Canadian families the two S's have been dropped - and some other spelling variations are also found.
(Durocher, Derosier and similar names are NOT usually related to DeRoche. Roche, Roach, and Deroiste, Derock and Stone often are related. Ancient branches of the family, which was originally Norman-French, moved into England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland with William the Conqueror. But more about all that some other time.)
The first DesRoches line derives from Jean- Antoine DesRoches who came from Burgundy and settled in the Montreal area about 1650. A lot of DesRoches and DeRoche families in the greatlakes area and points west descend from him.
Lhe second line derives from Louis and Julien DesRoches, brothers who emigrated from Normandy in about 1730 and settled in Prince Edward Island (It was called Ile St. Jean then under the French.) Most DesRoches and DeRoche families in Eastern Canada, New England, and Louisiana descend from them.
I descend from Julien DesRoches, the younger brother. I spell the family name "DeRoche", like you do, and so did my father and his father. My grandfather was born in Tignish, Prince Edward Island, and as a young man moved to Maine, looking for work, about the turn of the last century (1900, I mean). Many Acadians (as the French of eastern Canada were called) and French-Canadians (Quebec French) came to New England because jobs were more plentiful there. Most of my Acadian ancestors were farmers and fishermen. My grandfather worked as a farm-hand and lumberjack in Maine and New Hampshire. His father, my great-grandfather, (who spelled the name DesRoches)was a farmer from the Tignish area in the NW corner of Prince Edward Island.
You can find out a lot more about these folks by looking at the DesRoches Forum here on Genforum (it's the same name, after all), or else you might get in contact with the American-French Genealogical Society (AFGS), which is located in Woonsocket - they have a web site, too - just run a search in Yahoo, Altavista, or Hotbot, etc. on "AFGS". They have terrific resources on us Canucks.
You might also try the "Island Register" web pages - they have a lot of family lineages that you can look at, including DesRoches.
DesRoches is one of the founding families of Tignish, and there is some genealogical material on Tignish's web page too.
Jim D.
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